Hello!!

[PNWDrew]

Hi!
I am new to Sparky and Linux in general.  I tried Mint for an easy introduction to Linux but kept having problems; so for purely aesthetic reasons I choose Sparky.  I just liked the grey/blue palette. I did not realize that it was a little less noob friendly than Mint but have managed to get it set up without drama and without the repeated graphics problems that I had with Mint.

This is a homebuilt AMD PC, my first attempt at building my own also so I guess I am a double noob, or is it noob²?  I hope to only run Linux on it and am testing out a life with minimal Windows.  It's an A10-7850K APU on a Gigabyte GA-F2A88XN-WIFI mobo.  I might have gone with a better supported board (Gigabyte has no Linux at all) and processor if I had known what I was getting into but too late now. My "monitor" is actually an Samsung All-in-One Win 8.1 PC, though I haven't switched into MS since I got Sparky up and running - almost a week now.

I'm sure I will have questions as I know nothing right now, but so far Google has answered all my pressing problems.

Drew

[way12go]

I'm sure you will enjoy your stay with Sparkylinux, so do I.

All the best.

[PNWDrew]

After 3 months I am still happy with Sparky.  It just does all I need.  I usually hop from ROM to ROM on my phones and figured I'd do the same with distros.  I did install Enlightenment on an ancient AMD Turion laptop for kicks but haven't even opened it after initial testing.

There's been a few hiccups but nothing that sent me packing.  I still have issues with streaming a video sometimes but not enough to concern me. I also wish i had researched my components pre-build for Linux compatibility to ease my way.
Still it works without any major action on my part and I haven't ever had the almost daily annoyances and reboots that my Win PC gave me.  (16  days uptime at the moment). In fact I realized today that I haven't booted my Win 8.1 PC for anything other than accessing a SD card in months.  I may have achieved what I sought, a home life minus Windows. 

Thanks to the Sparky crew!

Drew

[way12go]

I bet you have found the nearly perfect if not perfect average user linux distro. Same here.

[Christoffer]

Glad to hear that you like Linux!
Noobies usually get scared when diving into something unfamiliar.

I also decided to do the switch from Windows since it kept annoying me. It's so easy to accidentally install a bunch of crap that slows down the PC. Only thing I'm missing is the games, but since Valve has invested lots in Linux, I guess more companies will start porting their games soon :-)

[way12go]

Windows has more softwares and more games than linux.

But for average user Windows is not good as it is filled with malware and viruses so the best choice is simply Linux.

[asaoppenheimer]

Hi everyone)). Im not using Sparky as daily OS but have tried Sparky and wanna say that guys from Poland do a great job. Buy the way few days ago I tried sparky 4.0 testing distro. It works well. But I noticed 2 flaws: there is no unique sparky's dock preinstalled and on my opinion there is no reason to add set of debian programs as sparky has its own preinstalled.

[way12go]

The dock was intentionally removed I guess.

On previous versions dock is preinstalled.

Also more than 12-13 years ago I met an online player shadowflare.us game named as

[ heimer ]

[PNWDrew]

After 4 months I am still on Sparky and see no reason to switch. It is my daily driver. Some quick thoughts:

Pros -
-Love the fast boot and resume from suspend.  With the SSD it is ready for password in under 10 sec from fully off.  Resume is pretty much instantaneous.
-Everything is snappy.  Opening many programs yielded a long wait in windows. Another SSD benefit but Sparky is so much less resource intensive that it deserves some credit.
-I've found Linux alternatives to most things, although I primarily use the browsers as my life has mostly moved online.  Not all Linux alternatives are equal to the MS programs I was used to but they work; local music players have so far been disappointing.

Cons-
-I still have occasional annoying issues with some work related web pages not working in the Google browsers but I with Iceweasel installed also I find one of the 3 works for most things.         My use of ad/java/flash blockers caused problems on my windows pcs also. 
-Problems with my network drive, it was working fine but I just noticed it is missing now.
-PlayonLinux just isn't cutting it, that's a major downside as I love World of Tanks.  It's the only reason I use Windows now. This isn't a Sparky problem per se, but a hitch in my plans to ditch MS.
-Keeping audio alive is still a problem for me, for unknown reasons I frequently lose all audio and have to unplug the USB speakers and reselect them in Alsamixer. 

None of these problems is a deal breaker and I knew going in that some annoyances were going to happen; I'd guess a more experienced user could solve some of them but I am still a novice (at best).

My next thought is to install another SSD and put Windows 10 on it when it debuts, not that I want really MS back but I'd like to play a game that has issues with PlayonLinux (World of Tanks).  My mobo has no linux support and I'd like to play around with OCing; that was part of the reason I built this PC.

Anyone know how easy it is to set up a PC with 2 (or more) drives with different OSes? I think I can just use BIOS to choose which drive boots but is there an better way?

Thanks to pavroo for his work on this!

Pavroo - donate doesn't work right on front page...   

[way12go]

Don't use adblockers, edit hosts file

someonewhocares.org/hosts/